


Equilibrium

by froggiechamp



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, almost unrequited, clueless crushing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28582242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggiechamp/pseuds/froggiechamp
Summary: George was fascinated by the idea of someone being so calm, it felt like an equilibrium. He'd finally feel completely satisfied, nothing to change.  Being so calm with no worries sounds boring to some, but he'd take it over working the same job since he was a teenager while his friends made excellent careers for themselves. He should have done more, he wanted to do more. Dream yearned for more too, in a different sense. He wanted someone to be a friend, rather than a colleague or viewer, someone he could share creative aspirations with who could be completely proud of him. Someone who'd watch him struggle through the hardest and celebrate the highest moments.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Equilibrium

Equilibrium can be defined as a calm state of mind. Alternatively, a scientific term for balance in a reversible reaction. This balance is one that is easily manipulated so the equilibrium shifts. A shift in a reaction’s conditions will always shift an equilibrium when in a closed system where nothing can escape.

Closed systems can’t be replicated in a person's mind or community. Conditions can change but there is no closed system to accommodate the changes.

Even if it were possible to replicate an equilibrium in an extremely calm state of mind, maintaining the same point of equilibrium comes with great challenge. People have constantly changing lives and conditions. Once a person has begun to adapt to a difficult change, a new one can take its place leaving a person drowning in possibilities, gulping for solutions to the complications they seem to run into everlastingly.

The misfortune fascinates George.

Equilibrium is a desire.

He believed he’d never feel true balance and settlement.

***

An unfulfilling push down on a lever, releasing the steaming milk into a customers coffee, causing a deep, hissing noise. A familiar sound.

Although familiarity is comforting, a constant sense of it turns to an eerie for a sudden change. 

George worked in an often cramped coffee shop. His life being hectic between this occupation to fill his days and, in his sparse times of leisure, watching the accommodating streams of a game he is an intermediate player of. These were adequate ways he spent his free time. Adequate meaning enough and almost satisfactory.

Adequate because he made money and could live on the amount he earned. Adequate because he found a substitute for playing a game he no longer has the energy and time for now he works, he found simply watching streams easier after a days labour.

Although he had distractions he provided himself with, things hadn’t been the same for a while. Not particularly burdened with unhappiness, he simply felt motionless.

The things he felt were rather unsettling for a man supposedly in the “prime of his life,” as the statement had been drilled into his skull. When put into comparison with his friends, he’d done nothing.

If only they hadn’t grown up, leaving him in the unchanging position feeling trapped in it. Not that moving on from childhood was their fault, they did everything as they should have done. He just became left behind, refusing university, still unsure what to do with his life as he headed into adulthood. 

Knocked back into reality when a coworker proceeds to fill another drink with the jarring hissing noise from the steaming milk dispenser, he proceeds with his job, wishing he could fall back into the daydreaming state.

The tedious calling of customers orders repeats.

Another one of hundreds of disposable, cardboard cups gets snatched by a busy claw, desperate to escape the café and arrive back at their own, more meaningful employment before their break is over.

However recurring this routine was, occasionally there’d be those who the man envied more than others. Whether he felt an urge to be acquainted with them or to live their life, they still broke the boring cycle of delivering similar orders for replicated customers.

The particular customer caught George’s eye this day was a taller man with butterscotch hair which politely thanked his waiter with a look of genuine sympathy in his eyes. A look with a communicative nature. It felt like an apology. The barista looked out of place working at his age. A boy his age should be busy fitting pieces of his jigsaw life together, not standing pouring coffees for those who have completed their jigsaws. 

Although working in a large chain coffee shop is no shameful job, its one many teenagers use to build their disposable income with their free time, many adults juggle to earn extra money, many older people use it to fill their days. George knows he wants more. He served this man who had a look in his eyes that agreed, George could do more.

George subconsciously saw the stranger as an escape, an interaction to claw onto and not let go. His tender nature felt temporarily freeing. 

Watching the man walk away, coffee in hand, his subconscious had failed him, his customer exited the building the same way every other did, to some sort of profession far above his kind. George realised he’d witness the odd person who caught his eye. Why was this one any different? He pondered. He’ll not see them again, he thought. They won’t remember each other, he was convinced. 

How could he ever get anywhere in life? Boring himself in a minimum wage job, as the people he grew up with began heisting every opportunity, evolving into the same people to visit a coffee shop and be inconsiderate and impolite to the workers who served them, who didn’t have the same opportunities presented to them. He felt completely out of luck.

***

Glaring lights dazzled in the face of a man who spent life at a computer. His head ached and his eyes strained. A growing impulse to plaster his hands over his ears worsened the longer he endured the droning buzz of the PC fan he hadn’t stopped hearing since he woke up. Although an easy fix, he felt like trivial things were incessantly a bother to him. 

In fairness, Clay, also known as Dream, never known much different than a cyber life. School was online past age 16; mainstream education never seemed to work well for him. Sitting in a dull classroom around uninspiring people had never sparked his attention.

Instead, his interests pointed towards his admiration for those who could create eccentric escapes from life using lines of code which led him to a hobby in which streamed a game which he cherished and could cooperate with his friends doing so. He would speedrun the game to display his long-practiced skills and showcase plugins he had created to add new, exciting challenges to the thing he knew so well.

So, although passionless in school, the man still had valid pastimes which went hand in hand with a respectable career path in content creating.

Despite his love for his self-employment, his streams still weren’t a replacement for a social life. Warming voice chats in streams tended to end abruptly when the streams came to an end. Although fun, his ‘friends’ were all colleagues in a sense. Admittedly, some were closer than others; that made him feel slightly less alone. But never completely accompanied.

The breaking records, the multiplayer, the heavily scripted wars on a sandbox game and the plugins, that in the man’s opinion, had not been his greatest invention, especially the time he electrocuted himself with every heart lost in the game were moments he still felt like he was living a solitary life, even with millions of attendees.

Nevertheless, he settled on the fact that careerwise, he felt happy.

But life is more than his career. And at the end of the day, it wasn’t the root of his unhappiness. Instead, the unhappiness stemmed from the fact that he had a yearning to do more and know more people. Although faceless to his substantially large audience, a thrill came with the thought of meeting a person who could adore him the way the audience of his does.

He craved someone who could take pride in his achievements as he did theirs, someone who he could get an immediate and genuine response from, someone who he could talk to without boundaries of privacy. 

However big this yearning, the glaring lights continued. The PC fan continued to whir. The impulse failed to stop. His life was seemingly still on a computer, without his imaginary someone. 

Although he’d been attempting work that day, nothing seemed to be sinking into his brain. With every dull task in need of completion, Dream’s headache grew. His motivations were at their lowest, he decided today simply wasn’t his day.

And with that, he chose a break. To go outside would be best. A break for a coffee and a walk in a nearby park. A simple way to calm his mind a little.

Inside the coffee shop, a crowded disorderly queue had formed and constant noise left no room to think. The complete opposite to what he could have anticipated, even on a working day. Still, he retained a peaceful exterior. In the face of a stressful situation, a routine of grounding himself was a comforting one. 

He’d learned a technique from a friend, when anxious, recite your surroundings so you feel in them, rather than in your own head.

He could smell the coffee and the milk. He could hear the calling of orders. He could feel the heat from the steamers. What he could see, however, was the thing that distracted him most. A man who had, similarly to himself, zoned out completely. Clay couldn’t figure out what quite made the boy stand out. The two would appear similar in age, he had the sudden apprehension of his own luck.

Who he stared at must have interests, Clay knew. He knew his career just profited off his interests, oddly, others were interested in the same things too. Eyeing the worker, clearly unhappy in his career, grasped an epiphany in him. He was happy in his career, at least.

He stood in line, waiting to order from a man he’d analysed as if he knew his life story, nervously tapping his phone as he did so. He felt an awkward sympathy, using someone else to realise your own privileges in life brought about a feeling of guilt, but awkward because he couldn’t help a worker who he knew nothing of, other than that he was about to make him a coffee. 

Drawing closer to the checkout, Clay managed to regain the confident facade he holds as Dream. It benefited him, to have had experience talking to so many people that the moment he felt social anxiety, he simply remembered how far he’d come in terms of talking to people. He could be as bold as he wanted, undoubtedly he’d avoid being creepy but he most likely would never see the man again. 

Why had he, up to this point, held this one interaction to such a high regard? 

Silly things like fate weren’t a concept Clay occupied his mind with. He had a bad day and knew insignificant distractions loomed over that day. He’d left his work station to distract himself, fixating on the boy was yet another distraction from work, he told himself. No other reasons. 

Eventually, he came to be served and told himself more things. When he’d heard a cute accent, he wasn’t immersed by it because he told himself he hadn’t heard a British accent on a person, face to face, before. He told himself that he felt envious of his pretty face, and that’s why he noticed it. He knew all of this was true, there was no reason behind him choosing he really liked the particular coffee shop. It just had good customer service, he decided. 

Notably, he’d distracted himself from sinful thoughts with work ones. He cursed himself for thinking about the employee so much. 

Meanwhile, George had completely forgotten about the interaction. Working in an environment where he saw person after person, he’d learned to let go knowing moments were fleeting. Once he’d left the shop, he could loosen up. That night, he’d had a notification that read “Sapnap is live: Sapnap went live!” And with that, he picked up his cat to give her attention while watching a stream.

The streamer's counterpart had seemed off to George, although a casual fan, he worried for him slightly. The same way he would for anyone. Imagining live streaming while in a fragile mental state made George pity the streamer, at least he wasn’t micro analysed by every customer, rather than having a spamming chat which highlighted how the streamer seemed absent, on surface level, he had people come and leave without a care in the world. George would have streamed, if he felt any amount of confidence to do so. Unfortunately now, he felt like his life repelled attention. He wouldn’t be able to cope streaming, building a platform, alone.

Perhaps Dream would benefit from teaching someone the things he’s learned streaming, it would help another person and maybe he’d have a friend, rather than a colleague. He’d considered trying to prop up smaller streamers, he’d donate to everybody he could whenever possible. But he’d not yet found a small streamer he could be comfortable enough to teach the etiquette, the algorithms and to share ideas with while also having an end goal of friendship. He had pondered the idea. It was a possibility. He just needed to find someone. 

**Author's Note:**

> help this is the first thing i've ever published on ao3 :o ofc we had the 2016 wattpad stories but hush they are a figment of my imagination i must forget them. anyways. hope this was enjoyable, i'm enjoying writing but who knows i have no beta reader and no sense of self evaluation so this could be shit and i wouldn't know.


End file.
